Away from Africa

Belatedly, a post about Vickie Fremont's exhibition at HIFA in Harare, Zimbabwe. This exhibition took place from May 1 to May 6, 2018, under the title “Birds of Freedom”, as part of the 18th edition of the Harare International Festival of the Arts (HIFA), which will run under the theme “We Count”. Vickie Frémont , as we know from various articles and blog posts, "has been conducting workshops around the world, using a hands-on approach for the transformation of rejects or trash into useful everyday objects. Her workshops... take place in schools, community centers, universities, and even in commercial malls. They include lectures on the destructive effects that trash of every kind has on the environment and on climate change. She has conducted her workshops using recycled materials at The Fashion Institute of Technology, Vickie Fremont at HIFA The Bank Street School for Children, The Henry Street Settlement in New York City,...

Ayse,  Bibi, and daughters  Bibi Seck is an industrial and product designer of Senegalese and Martiniquais descent,  introduced from afar by Fatimata Ly, a Senegalese ceramics designer I wrote about last year. As a matter of fact, I had been hearing about him and his spouse, Ayse Birsel, for a while already: the New York African design community is not that large, and especially an African married to a fellow Middle Easterner (Turks are Middle Easterners as well as Europeans, with literally a foot in both worlds; and of course we had the Ottoman Empire for six centuries!). Moroso-M'Afrique collection Bibi’s stools, made in Senegal, of recycled plastic, are currently exhibited at the Museum of Art and Design’s Global Africa show. I interviewed him last week to find out what his path had been to this point. Bibi was raised between Europe and Senegal.He had planned on studying architecture at first, but then found his true vocation in Industrial D...